Profile: Iain Reid

By Anna Bowen, May 2018Iain Reid’s first novel, I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Simon & Schuster, 2016), followed on the heels of two award-winning books of non-fiction, One Bird’s Choice (House of Anansi, 2010), about returning home to his family farm, andThe Truth About Luck (House of Anansi, 2013), lessons he received from his granny while on a road trip. Before it came out, Iain was awarded the 2015 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. I’m Thinking of Ending Things, dubbed a “tight, ferocious little book,” broke away from the tone of these gentle nonfiction memoirs, marking Iain’s first thriller. It tells the story of an unnamed young woman accompanying her boyfriend, Jake, to meet his parents at their house in the woods. The book was met with great reception; Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is set to adapt and direct the unnerving story as a film for Netflix.

Iain Reid’s newest novel and second thriller, Foe (Simon & Schuster, 2018), comes out in August of 2018 and has already been optioned for film by Anonymous Content (Spotlight, The Revenant, Mr. Robot). The novel is described as a “haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel.” Foe follows Henrietta and Junior who live in an isolated home in the country, and the fallout that happens when Junior is whisked away and Henrietta is left, not alone, but with… “familiar company.”

Iain has explained how an old ram was a very good audience and “first editor” as he was working on I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and that he took only about a week off before launching in to this newest work. We look forward to hearing about the sounding board and first editor – farm animal or otherwise — for Foe, and about the unsettling stories Iain Reid will conjure up next.

You can find Iain Reid reading from Foe at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. Be sure to find him and say hello at the book-signing table as well!